The closer we get to the presidential election — just 14 days away as I write — the more the left loses what little bit of rational thought it still might have. Tragic to some, hilarious to others, these people just can’t deal.
Such was the case on Monday’s episode of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” when occasional Biden speechwriter Jon Meacham claimed, with a straight face, to know what traditional Republicans who support former President Donald Trump’s campaign think. “In their hearts,” no less.
Think about that. Now, Democrats don’t just know what Trump voters support and oppose; they also know how the Trump faithful actually think and feel. Sorry, lefties, that’s a bit too ESP-ish for me.
Meacham lost his marbles, along with “Morning Joe” co-host Joe Scarborough, of course, in response to a Sunday Wall Street Journal op-ed about the Democrats continuing to label Trump a “fascist” (along with multiple other scary-sounding yet ridiculous ad hominem attacks).
First, this from The Journal:
As Election Day nears, and the progressive panic over Donald trump escalates, Democrats are closing their campaign with a favorite theme: Mr. Trump is a threat to the Constitution, to democracy itself, and is even a “fascist.” But is this true, and could he really impose authoritarian rule in the U.S.?
The fascist meme is all over the place, an upgrade from President Biden’s description of the MAGA movement in 2022 as “semi-fascist.” MSNBC interviews earnest academics who draw a straight historical line between mid-20th-century Europe and the 21st-century GOP. A writer for The Atlantic takes the hyperbole prize with a headline that says Mr. Trump is talking like Hitler, Stalin and Mussolini. Why leave out Chairman Mao?
Kamala Harris is also hitting the theme. Mr. Trump “is seeking unchecked power,” she told a crowd this week in Pennsylvania. “Listen to General [Mark] Milley, Donald Trump’s top general. He has called Trump, and I quote, ‘fascist to the core,’ and said, quote, ‘No one has ever been as dangerous to this country.’ ”
The Journal goes on to correctly explain that “most Americans simply don’t believe the fascist meme, and for good reasons.” After noting that Trump’s first term proved that the charge is ridiculous, the editorial board went bottom-line factual:
Whatever his intentions, the former president was hemmed in by American checks and balances. Democrats, the press, and the federal bureaucracy were relentlessly opposed to all his works, as they would be again.
Needless to say, the same restraints would be in place against, oh, say, a San Francisco radical leftist should she become president.
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This brings us back to “Morning Joe” and Jon Meacham, who was enraged by the WSJ piece — even though it contained a fair amount of criticism of Trump. For the sake of time and sanity, let’s just look at what Meacham said. Besides, his apparent clairvoyance was awesome.
The central thesis — the central thesis of the American Republic — if you want to go back to George Washington’s Farewell Address, was that this republic cannot exist without the moral and religious principle of a people. And leave out, if you want to, leave out the religious part for a minute. At least let’s talk about the moral part.
Uh-hu, Jon, let’s.
Let’s talk about the morality of supporting on-demand abortion of a healthy baby right up until the moment of birth. Let’s talk about the morality of intentionally allowing millions of unvetted illegal aliens into our country, untold numbers of them violent criminals, some of whom have viciously taped and murdered American citizens. Let’s talk about the Biden-Harris administration’s reaction to the death and devastation in North Carolina wrought by Hurricane Helene. Shall we go on?
Meacham continued, going way off the rails (emphasis, mine).
What worries me to death, nearly, is either the kinds of Republicans that we know and grew up with, either really believe this, they really believe that there’s really a kind of both sides thing, which is bad enough. And what’s even a little worse is they don’t really believe it.
But because they are not sufficiently troubled by what the former president represents, they’re looking for anything they can tell themselves to justify doing something that I think in their hearts they know is wrong.
So, in a nutshell, as Meacham sees it, traditional Republicans who support Trump know in their hearts that they’re wrong in doing so, but they have also delusionally convinced themselves for justification purposes that they’re doing the right thing.
Does any of that make a lick of sense to you? Me, neither.
